In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco present an exhibition of 250 ancient glass objects of extraordinary beauty. These vessels found in Israel span the period from the Bronze Age, dating from the 2nd millennium Before the Common Era (B.C.E.), to the Byzantine period, dating to the 7th century Common Era (C.E.). The exhibition, organized by the Fine Arts Museums in conjunction with the Israel Antiquities Authority, begins its American tour in San Francisco.

The 12th annual Youth Arts Festival and Exhibition showcases the visual and performing arts by San Francisco students in grades K-12. The celebration includes a student art exhibition in the de Young Museum, and choral, instrumental, and dance performances in the de Young Museum and Music Concourse. In addition, a variety of hands-on art activities will take place in the Music Concourse, Wednesday through Saturday. On Family Day, Saturday, May 9, there are special performances and activities for the entire family.

Inventing the Middle WestRegionalist painting had three major exponents: Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and John Steuart Curry. With these two artists Curry led the movement to create and celebrate what he felt was an indigenous and democratic American art--

The Fine Arts Museums are proud to celebrate the outstanding contributions to the museums by George Hopper Fitch, an ardent collector of works on paper and longtime trustee of the Fine Arts Museums, by exhibiting approximately 50 American and Mexican artworks collected by him. Over the years, Fitch has helped build the museums' collections both as a member of the museums' acquisition committee and through gifts to the museums from his personal collection.

The elegant vision of British still-life photographer Charles Jones (1866Š1959), whose work was only recently discovered, is finally shared with audiences through this exhibition of 59 gold-toned gelatin silver prints. A gardner by trade, Jones was at heart an artist and created an impressive body of work comprising of images of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. While his numerous photographs uncover both Jones's appreciation for nature and his artistic style, which exhibits elements of modernism, very little is known about his life or work.

A lively and engaging exhibition of art in all media, A Feast for the Eye celebrates and explores the vast subject of food. Still lifes, genre scenes, cartoons, photographs, and decorative arts illustrate both the serious and the humorous sides of food as a symbol of wealth, power, and status, as well as the powerlessness engendered by the lack of food.

This self-taught photographer created hundreds of glass-plate negatives that document the exotic sights and rich street life of Chinatown before its devastation in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Thirty of these works are shown as a group for the first time in an exhibition that unveils Genthe's early career as a pictorialist photographer, San Francisco's Chinatown during the turn-of-the-century, and the history of these illuminating photographs.

Interventions by Fred WilsonThe internationally-exhibited New York artist Fred Wilson is renowned for his museum "interventions," often surprising and controversial additions and alterations to conventional museum displays which attempt to challenge viewers' ideas about the traditional role of the museum. Wilson's work often forces museums to reexamine their roles as "keepers of culture,"and encourages visitors to be aware of coexisting historical and cultural facts that are seldom addressed in traditional museum diplays.